Full Spectrum Lighting - Is it any better?

lennon asms: "Lighting in my apartment sucks. I am giving some thought to full-spectrum lighting fixtures, like the the Vita-lite. Some places say it's not any better than regular lighting, others say it's just great. What do you think?" I find the quality of lighting in my work environment to be very important. Would lights such as these be better than your standard soft-white or flourescent bulbs?

Comments

Works for me

[maetenloch]

I put full spectrum bulbs in my office several months ago, and so far I've been very happy with them. I have a private office, but unfortunately without any windows so the only light sources are fluorescent lights. I got the full spectrum lights from Home Depot for only about $6 (GE I think). There are some other specialized manufacturers that charge $40+ for their bulbs, but as far as I can tell, they're essentially the same as the ones i got at Home Depot.

The difference is quite amazing - I never realized how sickly yellow the old lights were. The new lights have much more blue in them, and really do seem more like natural sunlight. Now I feel like I have skylights in the ceiling.

I can't tell if changing the lighting improved my performance, but it did make feel more comfortable and alert in my office. My co-workers like to keep their office dim except for their monitors - not me, I find that a dark room strains my eyes and makes me sleepy. I may be an exception since a lot of programmers like a dim room setup, and in our main office the engineering wing has no fluorescent lights on at all. Still I find that I do my best work in a naturally lighted environment. Without windows, full spectrums lights are as close as I can get.

Color Temperature and Bulb Quality Affect Light

[stinkydog]

The quality of flouresenct light is affected by many factors:

Color Temperature
Bulb Quality (you get whast you pay for)
Power and Ballast quality (Flicker)

For some other thoughts check this out. It is about lighting fish tanks and not cubes but it is still applicable. I supplement my flouresents with an incandescent bulb for better quality of light. More information on lighting theory is available here.

Try some of this if you want a different color.